The choice between politicos and wonks is that the politicos are better at attaining and maintaining office, but their policy ...

The Starmer-Reeves Government plans to fund the concessions they made to their revolting caucus have been deferred to the end ...

Does the Autumn 2024 British budget point to a change in fiscal strategies? Many countries found their fiscal position was unsustainable, following the 2008 Global Financial Crash. Their public ...

One option is to cut back on maintenance of your capital – say, to delay repainting the house or keeping the car in tip-top condition. The government does the same. Hence our three water systems ...

The Dangers of Delusions of GrandeurThe Dangers of Delusions of Grandeur This is a column about MAGA – Make America Great Again. But as a prequel I scroll back sixty years to when I was teaching in ...

Do its Property Right Provisions Make Sense? Last week I pointed out that it is uninformed to argue that the New Zealand’s apparently poor economic performance can be traced only to poor regulations.

We should try to to evaluate our social policies systematically. But big data has limitations. The National Party has promised to reintroduce the idea of ‘social investment’ analysis when it returns ...

Following the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families ...

The book I am currently working on – tentative title ‘In Open Seas’ – looks at the current and future New Zealand. One chapter describes the policy towards Covid using the trope of warfare. It covers ...

This column started out to explain how the proposed structural outsourcing of public surgery was partly a consequence of the peculiarities of our fiscal borrowing practices. In summary, the ...

Do we treat the government finances with the common sense that household’s manage theirs? It is a commonly held view that we should treat the government as if it is a prudent household. We don’t when ...

While many of the world’s Christian religions seem preoccupied with personal issues that Jesus, their founder, barely touched upon, they must engage with economic issues too.